Sport and Photography in the United States of America between the World Wars. A History of Modern Bodies as a Cultural History of the Political

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Olaf Stieglitz
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2012 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 230125758

This project is located at the intersection of three historiographical research fields. A cultural history of the political in the USA between the world wars, the concept of sports history as a history of modern bodies, and the attempts to strengthen the role of visual sources for historical research. A main objective will be to emphasize the additional value gained by analyzing sports photography as cultural history.As a cultural history of the political, the project aims at demonstrating who was able and allowed to share political, economic, social and cultural resources in order to participate in society. In the first half of the 20th century, establishing and maintaining hegemony oftentimes translated into body politics, both affirmative and critical. Photographic representations of sports were productive elements in these social controversies. As such they had real effects for individuals and social groups. Ideas about gender, race, class, age or disability were not the least created, transmitted and appropriated this way.The pivotal point of the project is the self-perception of the United States as being modern. Ideas about human bodies in motion, practicing sports, figured prominently in contemporary debates revolving around that notion of modernity. The technology of photography, now technically advanced and becoming increasingly visible in everyday life, became a central and actively meaning enhancing element in these debates for its own modern appeal was related to a concept of modernity associated with both doing and watching sports. And if the act of taking pictures first of all establishes the relevance of the object, as Susan Sontag stated, the sheer quantity of sports photography in the interwar years underscores the socio-cultural importance of sports. The project thus aims to analyze this function of sports photography in three interrelated fields: in applied sciences, in press photography and advertising photography, and among private photographers taking sports pictures.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants